Nations Slam U.K. for Contaminated Waste Imports

The United Kingdom (U.K.) is the latest nation being held accountable for dumping its contaminated waste in other countries.

For years, China had been the largest dumping ground for plastics. Since China implemented its National Sword policy, Poland soon became the sixth largest recipient of U.K. waste in the world and the second largest inside the European Union, behind the Netherlands, DW reports. Now, Poland has become fed up with illegally imported foreign waste from the U.K.

In addition, Sri Lanka has demanded that the U.K. take back more than 100 containers of waste consisting of plastics, syringes and suspected human remains believed to have been exported from the U.K. in 2017.

TIME reports that on July 24, protestors in Sri Lanka held a demonstration outside the British High Commission in the capital Colombo and handed over a letter urging the U.K. to take back the waste. According to the report, Sri Lankan authorities said they had taken “immediate action to order the re-export” of the waste.